cordoba

In my whole life I have never had a day even close to being similar to my day yesterday. Our school went on a day trip to Cordoba. (The bottom picture is just of my class, others classes were there too.) At my school there are a lot of students from North Africa. I was the only American on this trip. I have never felt the weight of my own American-ness like I did yesterday. I will try to explain some of my experience.

America and Iraq: I knew about half of the people on the trip, the rest were people from other classes. I ended up meeting another student from Iraq. As soon as he told me he was from Iraq and I told him I was from American a weird kind of like “what do I say now?” akwardness came between us. He said, “umm I am sorry…” I said, “yeah me too…” As if we were each our own country, that is a heavy weight. Anyways I sat next to him on the bus and asked him lots of questions about Iraq and how he feels and the people there and how it is now. It was interesting, hard, weird, and just a feeling of how broken our world is.

A mosque and a church: There used to be this massive mosque in Cordoba which is now being remodled into a massive Catholic church. Even though its being remodled its open for turists. So our group of like 20 Muslims and one Christian (me) go explore this like half old mosque, half new church. Once again I felt a weight, a weight of the history between the Christians and Muslims in the re-conquest in Spain. While we were walking around in there I asked one of my friends how she is feeling right now. She felt angry. She said, “a mosque is a place for prayer and a place of respect, a mosque has it’s respect, this is not respect.”

A group of girls: Later we got some free time to go walk around and do whatever. I met a group of girls from another class at my school who I really enjoyed, so we went and sat in a plaza together. They offered me chocolate and juice that they had brought. In contrast to weight I had felt, there came a lightness in just sitting in a plaza with girls… talking, eating, laughing and taking pictures together. We are all foriengers, we are all learning Spanish, and we are all missing our countries and families. And with these new friends, despite all our differences, I really feel like there was unity. It was good, really good.

bullfighters and underware models

Two weekends ago I went to Morocco. We went to a city called Tanger, it is on the coast! It was cool we got to see this cave by the ocean and the place that looks out is in the shape of Africa. I also got to stand at the place where the Atlantic and Meditteranean Oceans mix. I wanted to call my mom and tell her I was looking out over 2 oceans at one time, but I didn’t have my phone or service.

Sunday morning we went to a Catholic church (while we were in Morocco). We went with a group of Menonites that we met at our hotel. The singing and music at the church was done by black Africans from Nigeria (I think), so it was really cool African beats and styles but done in Spanish, in a Muslim country! It was quite a mixture of Spaniards, Menonites, Africans, us and nuns who are followers of Mother Teresa.

We took a ferry back to Spain. I had some really good moments listening to music and sitting in the sun on top of the ferry. I was remembering about a year ago when I was anticipating coming to Spain and now, well… its been almost a year. And God has amazed me and thrilled me with the path he’s lead me on starting with that very scary and “uncertain” step on to the plane to Spain last March.

On our way home we ended up getting in a car accident. A car rearended the car behind us and then they hit us. I am so thankful to say no one was hurt. But the guys that hit us are bullfighters! Hahahahaha! They gave us posters of themselves all decked out in their bullfighting outfits.

I went to the beach the other day, it was gorgeous and the beach was so empty! So I sat by my self to read and just be and pray. But then this Spanish underware model guy named Jose Maria (Joseph Mary) came up to me and sat there and talked to me for a while. He said he was Catholic, but didn’t know really what Catholics believe. It was cool I got to share the gospel with him. He said he’d never read the bible, I told him he should… especially since he is named after both Jesus’ parents ☺

I am also still enjoying like every step of walking, its so nice to be able to walk! And today I went on my first run back after waiting for more than a month! I put my chariots of fire sound track on and took those first steps, man it was soooooooooooooo (insert some sound I would make because there are no words to describe it) !!!!!